Online Cost-Effectiveness ANalysis (OCEAN): a user-friendly interface to conduct cost-effectiveness analyses for cervical cancer

Abstract

Background: Most cost-effectiveness analyses in the context of cervical cancer prevention involve the use of mathematical models to simulate HPV infection, cervical disease and prevention strategies. However, it is common for professionals who would need to perform these analyses to not be familiar with the models. This work introduces the Online Cost-Effectiveness ANalysis tool, featuring an easy-to-use web interface providing health professionals, researchers and decision makers involved in cervical cancer prevention programmes with a useful instrument to conduct complex cost-effectiveness analyses, which are becoming an essential tool as an approach for supporting decision-making that involves important trade-offs. Results: The users can run cost-effectiveness evaluations of cervical cancer prevention strategies without deep knowledge of the underlying mathematical model or any programming language, obtaining the most relevant costs and health outcomes in a user-friendly format. The results provided by the tool are consistent with the existing literature. Conclusions: Having such a tool will be an asset to the cervical cancer prevention community, providing researchers with an easy-to-use instrument to conduct cost-effectiveness analyses. Keywords: Cervical cancer screening, Markov chain model, Cost-effectiveness, Online tool, cancer prevention, Decision making